Forget job losses, deepfakes and killer robots. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel says only one message would push President Donald Trump to treat artificial intelligence (AI) as an emergency, and the ABC host handed it to White House staffers in his monologue on Thursday, September 17, 2026: tell the president ChatGPT is about to release the Trump-Epstein files.
A string of grim warnings from inside the AI industry gave the bit on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” its starting point. Those concerns have been branded “a hoax” by Trump, who is 80, and he has said his administration will not change course on the technology.
“So researchers at Anthropic—one of them said he believes there was more than a 10 percent chance AI could end all human life,” Kimmel said. “But don’t worry, because President Trump has assured us that this threat to our existence is nothing more than a hoax.”
Inside the Reported White House Meetings
Citing a published report, Kimmel said senior White House officials have been huddling nearly every day over how to get the president to put more guardrails around AI. Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Elon Musk, Trump’s ex-best friend, have all sounded the alarm, and those officials are said to be searching for the one argument that would get the president to listen to them.
There is even a nickname attached to the effort, the host said. “They’re calling it ‘Operation Take Away Grandpa’s iPad,’” Kimmel joked.
“Trump’s staff has reportedly given up on trying to convince him of anything, which to me is even scarier than AI,” Kimmel said.
The Trump-Epstein Files Punchline
The Epstein files line drew cheers, and Kimmel followed it with a wager. “I’ll bet a hundred bucks he’ll get Pandora’s stuff right back in that box,” he added. A president who has resisted calls for AI regulation would, by that logic, abruptly discover a way to pull the plug on the technology.
The bit rests on Trump’s late friend Jeffrey Epstein. Their friendship ran for years before it ended sometime in the 2000s, and late-night hosts have returned repeatedly to that chapter of the president’s past, which has trailed him through his second term.
The construction is a familiar one: take the abstract, hard-to-dramatize risk of machine intelligence and swap in something concrete and personal. In Kimmel’s framing, warnings from Altman, Amodei and Musk have not moved the president, so the joke scales the threat down to the man rather than the species.
Kimmel Parodies Trump’s Assistant Natalie Harp
Kimmel aimed at another figure in Trump’s orbit in his Thursday, September 24 monologue on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” staging a sketch that mocked the president’s executive assistant, Natalie Harp. A character called “Natalie” rushed onstage carrying golf clubs, a briefcase and a laptop, called Kimmel her “guardian” and “protector” and offered to post “Truths” for him before Guillermo Rodriguez escorted her off.
The parody assistant protested as she was taken backstage: “I can’t hear you backstage. I cannot smell you backstage. I can’t wipe you backstage. I’m here to serve you.” She also said, “Your wife doesn’t deserve you!”
The same monologue turned to the press corps, with Kimmel joking about MS NOW, CNN and Politico regaining White House access: “They’re back whether the president wants them or not, and he does not,” adding that the outlets “embarrassed him in front of another authoritarian leader, which is just inconsiderate, if you ask me.” Trump had announced the ban on the three outlets on Friday, September 18, for publishing “fake news”; they sued jointly, and on Thursday, September 24, a federal judge temporarily blocked the ban.
One Year After the Suspension
The AI monologue fell on a date that carries its own weight for the program. ABC pulled the show off the air one year earlier, on September 17, 2025. Reporting later traced that call to Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger, along with Dana Walden, who co-chairs Disney Entertainment. Kimmel has said the news reached him by phone around 3 p.m. at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in Hollywood, where the show tapes; that night’s episode was set to begin taping at 4:30 p.m.
His suggested bank shot through ChatGPT was, of course, written as a laugh line and not a policy proposal.
Brooklyn is the show’s next stop. As of September 25, Kimmel has announced he will tape “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House from September 28 through October 2, with guests including Mahershala Ali, Billy Crystal, Paul McCartney, Seth Meyers, Tom Morello, John Oliver, Bernie Sanders, Bruce Springsteen, Howard Stern, Pete Davidson, Robby Hoffman and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The president’s stated position, meanwhile, is the premise the whole bit was built on. Broad calls to regulate AI in the U.S. have been brushed aside by Trump, who has maintained that the country needs no additional guardrails and said his administration will stay the course on the technology. That leaves the aides described in that reporting to keep meeting, and the late-night host to keep offering his wager.
Trump announced Saturday, September 19, that his administration will establish a new “AI Force.” Efforts to slow the expansion of artificial intelligence and the data centers that support it drew his pushback in the same breath.
Critics are trying to undermine the rapidly growing AI industry, Trump said in a series of comments on Truth Social, and he added that his administration would resist policies that could restrict its development. Federal support for the technology was part of his pledge, though he maintained that harmful conduct involving AI could be addressed through existing criminal and civil laws.
How the proposed AI Force would operate, and where it would sit within the federal government, went largely unexplained by Trump. An AI coordinator, whom he referred to as an “AI czar,” would be named in the near future, he said. Harmful actors would be the new group’s target, the president indicated, while AI companies would remain free to continue developing their technology.
Debate over the risks and benefits of increasingly powerful AI systems has been growing as the announcement lands. Stronger safeguards or a slower pace of development have been urged by some technology executives and researchers; Trump, for his part, has repeatedly dismissed some of the warnings surrounding AI as exaggerated.
Data centers have also become part of the debate because of the large amounts of electricity required to operate AI systems. Opposition in some areas has grown out of Concerns about energy consumption, infrastructure and the effects of new data centers on surrounding communities.
Restricting the industry could weaken the United States in its technological competition with China, Trump has argued. Expanding domestic AI capabilities is the emphasis of his administration, which resists regulations it believes could hamper innovation.
Washington faces increasing pressure to determine how rapidly advancing AI technology should be governed, and into that pressure comes the AI Force proposal. Trump, for now, has not provided a timetable, organizational structure or detailed mandate for the new initiative.
